Basilica

Originally a royal palace which consisted of a large oblong building or hall with double colonnades and a semicircular apse at the end, used for a court of justice and place of public assembly. It formed one side of the forum or marketplace. The term owes its original meaning to the fact that in Macedonia the kings, and in Greece the archon Basileus dispensed justice in buildings of this description. The Romans, who adopted the basilica from those countries, used it as a court, a branch of the forum, etc. The first basilica was built at Rome, 182/184 BC. One such building is the Basilica of Maxentius, which has survived in the ruins of the Forum in Rome. Its aisled-hall plan of which was adopted by many early Christian churches. The form of construction remained popular for a variety of religious purposes in Rome, Ravenna, and North Africa from the 4th-12th centuries. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, constructed several basilican churches in the 4th century, including the first St. Peters.

[Greek: ‘royal building’]. The Romans applied this name to a range of rectangular roofed buildings, with or without apse, subdivided internally by single or double rows of columns, roughly in the manner of the nave and aisles now familiar from church architecture. There was usually a clerestorey (a series of windows piercing the upper part of the nave wall to give extra light) above which rose the roof, sometimes vaulted but more commonly of timber. The building was usually entered, through a covered entrance porch (narthex). One such building is the Basilica of Maxentius, which has survived in the ruins of the Forum in Rome. However, in ancient Rome the term ‘basilica’ applies to the function rather than the form of the building: the Roman buildings normally adjoined the forum and functioned as public meeting halls, courts and even markets. In the early medieval period, the basilican form was adapted for Christian use. In several instances, Roman basilicas were refashioned for Christian worship, and the form of construction remained popular for a variety of religious purposes in Rome, Ravenna and the Latin West as well as in Byzantium and North Africa from the 4th century to the 12th century. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, constructed several basilican churches in the 4th century, including the first St Peters and the Lateran. The finest early Christian basilicas — S. Apollinare Nuovo and S. Apollinare in Classe — are to be seen in Ravenna, with their marble columns and marvellous Byzantine mosaics intact. The true basilican church belongs to the Mediterranean, North Africa and Byzantium in the early Christian era between the demise of the Roman empire and the emergence of the Romanesque style. The longitudinal aisled hall remained in the minds of the architects of the great Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals of Western Europe, but by the later medieval period the essential simplicity of the basilican design had been submerged in elaborate bayed and vaulted schemes with transepts, towers and elaborate facades.